The download or streaming of a media asset wirelessly to a device relies on signal strength at the device and continuity of service during the transmission. Various external factors may impact these criteria, especially if the device is mobile and moving. If the device is in an area of poor signal strength, the bitrate and integrity of the service can suffer. When this happens, the device is limited in the types of operations it can perform reliably with respect to receiving media assets. For example, a device in an area of poor signal strength may not be able to stream video at a sufficiently high bitrate. Even if signal strength was known to vary in a predictable way so that problems along a travel route could be anticipated, the device would be solely responsible for buffering the entire media asset. This is time intensive (e.g. in the example used above, it may take too long to buffer a high bitrate video before the device has moved out of the area of good signal coverage) and the device remains exposed to a degraded service.